Way to check out the validity and currentness of your tips FBI. Thank goodness someone in the family didn't think it was a robber or rapist and draw a gun. They would have shot an innocent family. I sure hope they learn from this mistake however i highly doubt they will. How hard would it have been to check out if the current family in that house was the same one they were looking for? I mean are they not supposed to be the best in the World with the most high tech tools at their disposal???? Geezzz

Sadly, these type of searches are more common than you think. Some recent searches in Massachusetts and Arizona have ended with innocent people being shot dead by the very people who are supposed to protect them. Until there are consequences for these deadly mistakes, they will continue to happen.

Don't know if they still are but at one time the feds could get a search warrant based only on information from a anonymous source. So..... someone with a grudge could get a search warrant issued on your place for made up facts.

A search warrant is not needed to enter a residence to execute an arrest warrant that is issued on valid probable cause. If there was reason to believe that the residence entered was the residence of the person named in the warrant and to believe that person was inside it is a legal entry. There is no information presented here as to what information was in the hands of the officers regarding the residence prior to the entry.

Are you sure about that ou? Can an officer with only an arrest warrant in hand enter any home without permission? Or could it be that he would need the same probable cause it would take to get a search warrant before he could enter?

"The United States Supreme Court, in Payton v. New York, held that an arrest warrant founded on probable cause implicitly carries with it the limited authority to enter a dwelling in which the suspect lives when there is reason to believe the suspect is within."

Entry can also be made into the home of a third party under the Tolbert rule if the officer has a valid reason to believe that the offender named in the arrest warrant will be present in the home.

I wonder how well Payton v NY will hold up in this case considering the suspect moved out two years prior to the raid? My view is bad intel negates the conditions cited by the court.

And the Tolbert rule doesn't apply. The FBI believed the suspect lived there, not that there was a third party who owned or rented the home. This mistake was discovered after the fact.

I hope the family and the lawyers push this for a huge pile of money and make a big stink out of it. Something has to be done to prevent these raids based on bad intel.

----

We have had classic examples of bad intel on the part of Police in Portland. In one case, a drug raid was executed with a heavily armed SWAT team using an armored personnel carrier. The warrant would have been good were it not for the fact that the suspects had moved out a month before. The landlord had a Hispanic groundskeeper cleaning up the yard. He heard a loud vehicle, and turned around and saw the APC. At that moment he was shot at close range with a rubber bullet gun, causing injury (in fact the rubber bullet broke his arm). He was held on the ground face down for an extended length of time while the house was searched and was denied medical treatment during the search. All this could have been avoided if the intel had been updated just prior to the raid. The problem is that in a bureaucracy things proceed according to policy and a flow chart, and there seldom is any deviation from it. So it was policy to not perform what should be a reasonable update on basic intel to make sure the suspects even lived there anymore before endangering innocent third parties including neighbors.

Here's another bad intel case wherein the police saw what they thought were pot plants from the air, then did a raid with no further intel to ascertain these were, indeed, pot plants. They turned out to be hibiscus plants with big white flowers, which pot does not have. Another case is cited because police thought tomato plants were pot plants. Doh!

The police need to be held liable for bad intel resulting in botched raid, not just in civil court, but criminally too if there are deaths or injuries. The police have immunity, and that's a two-edged sword. There must be reasonable immunity for doing their jobs properly, but that immunity should diminish quickly for incompetence and other unjustifiable acts.

There is not enough information presented to determine what the FBI believed nor that they may not have had information that the subject was recently in the residence. You have only snippets from one side of the story. I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that law enforcement was wrong to act on the information they had based on the scant information presented here. According to a Pittsburgh news station it was a female who was named in the warrant. The article says the person was not related to the family, not that they didn't know her. Let us know what information is presented in the trial.

With only snipets and a general informational (as opposed to specific and detailed) story, I would conclude that the FBI was correct in their shooting suspects at Ruby Ridge. Same with the ATF and the wackos in Waco...